In 2007, divers off Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula discovered a
deep underwater cave, where they found numerous fossilized bones from long
extinct species, such as the Saber-Tooth Tiger and giant ground sloths. They
also found the near complete skeletal remains of a human being, a girl of
perhaps 15 years of age at the time of her death. The bones were dated about
12,000 to 13,000 years old. This discovery didn’t excite anywhere near the
publicity of Kennewick Man, found in the state of Washington. No doubt there
was concern about “jumping to conclusions” as Jim Chatters did when he
described Kennewick Man as having ”Caucasoid” characteristics, exciting a round
of racist theorizing about “who was here first”—which didn’t stop even when an
independent study of its DNA and skull characteristics pointed to east Asian
origins.
Chatters, perhaps to set the record “straight,” co-authored
a study published in Science on the
nature and origins of the bones of the girl now named Naia. In a brief summary,
the truth is clear enough:
Because of differences
in craniofacial morphology and dentition between the earliest American
skeletons and modern Native Americans, separate origins have been postulated
for them, despite genetic evidence to the contrary. We describe a near-complete
human skeleton with an intact cranium and preserved DNA found with extinct
fauna in a submerged cave on Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. This skeleton dates to
between 13,000 and 12,000 calendar years ago and has Paleoamerican craniofacial
characteristics and a Beringian-derived mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) haplogroup
(D1). Thus, the differences between Paleoamericans and Native Americans
probably resulted from in situ evolution rather than separate ancestry.
In other words, Naia came from the same genetic strain as
modern Native Americans, and differences in skull features either indicate a
separate, earlier migratory group that eventually died out, or by evolutionary
process. But that hasn’t stopped so-called scientists and white supremacist
types with a “white people were here first” philosophy from offering their “alternative”
view. These theories are based solely on the discovery of so-called Clovis
points, which are alleged to be of solely European origin.
That includes the Seattle
Times, which has for years shamelessly cheerleaded such claims in regard to
Kennewick Man, and its reporter on this latest study still gives credibility to
long discredited “theories” by the likes of Dennis Stanford of the Smithsonian
Institute. The credulous reporter allows Stanford to expectorate that “It’s
hard to draw sweeping conclusions from a single skeleton (much like he did in
regard to Kennewick Man),” and editorializing “based on similarities between spear points
and stone tools, Stanford is convinced that some of the first people to settle
North America came from Europe — and there’s nothing in the new study to rule
that out, he said."
Stanford’s colleague, Douglas Owsley, who is allegedly “a
leading expert” on Kennewick Man, “cautioned” that the findings were based on
“a sample of one”—odd how he and others have made wild claims based solely on
the single example of Kennewick Man, which he and others in the scientific
community made without proper testing or study. Even Scientific American and other “scholarly” publications used this as
license to depict the earliest Americans with clearly Caucasian features, and
the History Channel has also done so its documentary programming.
As of now, it is indisputable that the oldest human remains
found in the Americas is genetically one and the same with modern Native
Americans. Why some people insist otherwise can only be due to racial arrogance
and conceit—not scientific rigor.
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